Last
Tuesday there was a meeting up in Denton, Texas, of the newly
formed board of directors of a group calling themselves TORO, or
the Texas Off-road Racing Organization. As I understand it, they
were there to start laying down the ground rules for a new club
dedicated to Hare Scrambles type riding here in north Texas.
During the meeting a few things were decided that I will try to
relay to you. This is NOT the official TORO site, and
it is only my intent to give what I believe to be factual
information here, so until those guys publish an official
statement...well like I said, I'll try to give you the UNOFFICIAL
facts.

In
no particular order.

First
of all, the Club, and indeed the Board of Directors will be made
up of active racers from northern, & eastern enduro clubs as
well as some of the northern cross country riders. In fact, the
way I understand it, is that they have asked that all members of
the Board of Directors be active racers. The club wants to
limit the membership, to a manageable size, for the sake of the
tracks, the officers, and the members themselves. I don't believe
the exact number of members has been decided yet, but the numbers
"five or six hundred" were mentioned at least
once. The rules will probably ( as soon as they are
completed ) follow the AMA Hare Scrambles rules, in the hopes
that, possibly in the future, they can host an AMA event as part
of the series. I don't recall if this is a dead engine start
or not, I'll get that later. But the races will be a
"time + 1 " event. That is, they will be based on a time
of, 30 minutes, plus one more lap, for the minis & ladies. 60
minutes plus one lap for the amateurs, and 90 min plus one lap for
the experts / pros.

Second,
it seems to be clear that that TORO ( at least in it's
infancy ) doesn't want to conflict with the the TCCRA ( Texas
Cross Country Racing Association ) as it would not be beneficial
to the promoters, or membership of either organization. So the
guys at TORO are going to base their schedule in the major portion
of the TCCRA's "off season".

Thus,
there will be six races in their "Winter Series", with
points going towards an end of the series championship. The series
will run from September 30th to February 10th. There will be
one drop. Which is to say, that of the six available events, only
five will be counted at the end. So you can race all six &
drop your worst finish, or if an emergency arises that would
keep you away from an event, you can skip that event, & drop
that score. They will be racing about every third week, on
Saturday afternoon & Sunday.

The
race weekend schedule is as follows. ( roughly ) On
Saturday there will be one hour of dedicated practice time for
each of three categories of rider, Expert, Amateur, and ladies /
Mini bike riders. And this practice time will be allocated by the
promoter / land owner, which is to say, that if they don't want a
Saturday practice then there won't be one. Then on Saturday
afternoon they will race the Minis, Ladies, & later, the
"Pit-Bikes" a fours stroke only, under 150cc,
16"rear, 19" front wheeled class...any age.

There will be a one lap preview of the track before each race (
Parade Lap ). On Sunday there will again be a Parade
lap, then the Amateur / Expert races. I'm not clear on who races
first, the Amateurs or the Experts, but there will be a parade lap
before each event. ( I am assuming here that the Amateurs
will go first, because there will be a Sportsman class, that will
make up the first row of the Amateur race, and I was told that the
sportsman class could be used for practice, or an extra chance to
ride on Sunday. The sportsman class, is not a points winning
class, just a bunch of guys racin'. And as I understand it,
can be made up of any full size, class of bike, or rider ). Sunday
afternoon, and this is time permitting, there will run the
Quads...time permitting.

At this point at least four promoters have scheduled a race. The
Red River Dirt Riders have decided to put one on at Muenster.
Brian Storrie will host one at his farm in Denton. There are
two others but somehow I lost that information. I'll let you know
who the other folks are, & where they are, & when they
are, as the soon as information is available to me.

They decided that the Saturday races will be a timed 30 minute
plus one lap race.

They
also decided on some rider classifications, and they are listed
below.

Saturday:

50cc amateur /
expert up to
9 years old.

65cc ama. /
ex.
up to 12 years old

Mini ama /
ex
up to 16, limited to 100cc two stroke or 125cc four stroke.

This
is pretty much all I know at this time. There will be another
meeting two weeks from the last, which will be Tuesday evening
the...uh...10th of July. It will be at the Denton GAS GAS
dealer, SMS Racing. The owner, Brian Storrie, invites
everyone to come, & LISTEN QUIETLY, but he also asks that you
not call him directly for any information on this, as he would
never get any work done, & surely go broke!!!

Patman

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